Occasional Papers eBook

justices of the temporal courts and the ecclesiastical
judges have kept themselves within their proper
jurisdiction, without encroaching or usurping
one upon another; and where such encroachments
or usurpations have been made, they have been the
seeds of great trouble and inconvenience.”

Because none can resist the principle
of your proposal, who admit that the Church has
a sphere of proper jurisdiction at all, or any duty
beyond that of taking the rule of her doctrine and
her practice from the lips of ministers or parliaments.
If it shall be deliberately refused to adopt a
proposition so moderate, so guarded and restrained
in the particular instance, and so sustained by
history, by analogy, and by common reason, in the
case of the faith of the Church, and if no preferable
measure be substituted, it can only be in consequence
of a latent intention that the voice of the Civil
Power should be henceforward supreme in the determination
of Christian doctrine.

We trust that such an assurance, backed as it is by
the solemn and earnest warnings of one who is not
an enthusiast or an agitator, but one of the leading
men in the Parliament of England, will not be without
its full weight with those on whom devolves the duty
of guiding and leading us in this crisis. The
Bishops of England have a great responsibility on
them. Reason, not less than Christian loyalty
and Christian charity, requires the fairest interpretation
of their acts, and it may be of their hesitation,—­the
utmost consideration of their difficulties. But
reason, not less than Christian loyalty and charity,
expects that, having accepted the responsibilities
of the Episcopate, they should not withdraw from them
when they arrive; and that there should be neither
shrinking nor rest nor compromise till the creed and
the rights of the Church entrusted to their fidelity
be placed, as far as depends on them, beyond danger.

II

JOYCE ON COURTS OF SPIRITUAL APPEAL[3]

[3]Ecclesia Vindicata; a Treatise on Appeals
in Matters Spiritual.
By James Wayland Joyce. Saturday Review,
22nd October 1864.

Nothing can be more natural than the extreme dissatisfaction
felt by a large body of persons in the Church of England
at the present Court of Final Appeal in matters of
doctrine. The grievance, and its effect, may
have been exaggerated; and the expressions of feeling
about it certainly have not always been the wisest
and most becoming. But as the Church of England
is acknowledged to hold certain doctrines on matters
of the highest importance, and, in common with all
other religious bodies, claims the right of saying
what are her own doctrines, it is not surprising that
an arrangement which seems likely to end in handing
over to indifferent or unfriendly judges the power
of saying what those doctrines are, or even whether
she has any doctrines at all, should create irritation